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Letterform for the Ephemeral

This project focuses on the essence of the notion of time, rather than to its general definition.

A group of people was asked to pose as a set of numbers, from 0 to 9, wearing the yellow sleeves. These images have been used to produce an on-line clock, set on the Greenwich Mean Time. The numbers are humans performing an everlasting choreography referencing the (real) passing of time, people standing as the Hours moving only once every 60 minutes, while the one acting as the tenths of Seconds executes a very fast routine in a continual move.

As seen at Liverpool Street Station on the 23/10/2009 between 18:00:00 and 19:00:00

Liverpool St Station, 18:00:00 - 19:00:00

The final phase of this project took place in a busy train station during rush hour,in order to reflect the flow characteristic of the place. It involved eight people mimicking a digital clock in real time with their arms and shoulders. Standing in line side by side in the middle of the station, two of them acted as the hours units, two for the minutes, and another two for the seconds.
Two other performers acted as the colons separating each unit of time. The wearable letterform, with its specific flexibility, allowed the message (in this case Time) to change from one second to the other, following more or less accurately the ticking of the station’s clock.
The numbers each of the performers enacted were enhanced by day-glow long-sleeved boleros, which besides making them visible, also echoed the yellow of the trains schedule boards above them.

Used in this specific context and by using people as a medium, this temporary letterform confronts the economic value of time (as in time is money) with the individual perception of it.